- Russell Jenkins
The mother of a 14-year-old girl wept in court as a kebab shop owner was heard on tape allegedly telling how he had chopped up her daughter and placed her body, “bones and all”, in a mincing machine.
Karen Downes broke down in the public gallery as the gruesome conversation between the fast-food shop owner and another worker in Blackpool was played at the murder trial of Iyad Albattikhi.
Mrs Downes’s daughter, Charlene, “vanished off the face of the earth” three years ago after kissing her mother goodbye, Preston Crown Court was told.
No trace of her has been found since, the jury heard, leading police and her family to the “inescapable conclusion” that she is dead.
Charlene was known to have been among a number of young white girls who congregated around a district of Asian fast-food shops in the Lancashire seaside town.
The prosecution claims that Charlene was killed by Mr Albattikhi, 29, the owner of the Funny Boyz kebab shop, and that he had boasted of having sex with the teenager.
The tape recording, the prosecution suggests, is of a conversation between Mr Albattikhi and his business partner and co-accused, Mohammed Reveshi, 50, about how the girl’s body was disposed of after her murder.
On one tape, it is claimed, Mr Reveshi said: “Her big bones went into the machine as well, you know that, don’t you?” Mr Albattikhi replied: “Her bones? Did you . . . inside the machine?” “Yes,” Mr Reveshi said.
More than 52 tape recordings were captured by covert surveillance of Mr Reveshi’s home and car between February and March 2004 by the police inquiry team set up after Charlene disappeared in November 2003.
The jury was told that in one conversation Mr Reveshi had said to his partner: “Well, hopefully I [done] it properly you know . . . he thought he saw me cutting her body up.
“Do you remember she was bleeding to death?” “Yes,” replied Mr Albattikhi. “So that she made a mess,” Mr Reveshi allegedly added. Later in the transcript Mr Reveshi allegedly says: “The last one then, it was the last deep one and then it was the [heart] . . . that finally killed her.”
At one point Mr Reveshi said: “I’m so worried and you was the one who killed her.”
In his opening address to the jury last month, Tim Holroyde, for the prosecution, claimed that a witness had heard Jorda-nian-born Mr Albattikhi joke with fellow takeaway employees about how the teenager had been chopped up, and how her body “had gone into the kebabs”. Mr Albattikhi, of Blackpool, denies murdering Charlene while Mr Reveshi, also of Blackpool, denies disposing of her body."

Islamic Child Sex Ring

"It was nearly two and a half years later that three men were arrested for the murder of Charlene [3: BBC 2006 Mar 7], although eventually only two men were charged: [4: BBC 2006 Mar 9th] [5: Daily Mirror 2006 Mar 10th] [6: Blackpool Today 2006 Mar 9th].
The three men were:
Iyad Albattikhi, 28, Jordanian, divorced, charged with murder.
Mohammed Raveshi, 49, Iranian, bachelor, property landlord, social services worker and foster father, charged with assisting in the disposal a body.
The third unamed man, 29, questioned over the murder was released on police bail [7: Bolton Evening News 2006 Mar 9th].
During the investigation into the disappearance of Charlene Downes police uncovered evidence of a child sex ring offering girls as young as 12 to paedophiles leading them to believe she, along with other children in Blackpool, may have been sold for sex and forced into prostitution [8: Sun 2004 Oct 30th]. From http://tottenhamlad.blogspot.com/2006/10/remembering-charlene-downes.html